


Holiday of a Lifetime

by Eigon



Category: Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch, The Dresden Files - Jim Butcher
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-30
Updated: 2020-10-30
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:01:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27285343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eigon/pseuds/Eigon
Summary: From Love Hurts, in the Songs of Love and Death anthology by Jim Butcher: "As far as I know, I am the only wizard on the planet earning a significant portion of his income working for a law enforcement agency."Harry Dresden obviously hasn't heard of The Folly.Meanwhile, Peter Grant, of the London Metropolitan Police, hasn't heard of Harry Dresden.
Relationships: Beverley Brook/Peter Grant
Comments: 2
Kudos: 33





	Holiday of a Lifetime

It was meant to be the holiday of a lifetime – for Mr. Grant Sr., at least. Peter was well aware that his primary function on this occasion was to carry the luggage. Amazingly, given Mr Grant's somewhat chequered medical history, and his age, he had even managed to get medical insurance for the trip.  
Mrs. Grant was not prepared to cross the Atlantic. Instead, while the men were away, she intended to enjoy the company of some cousins who had managed to find a cheap flight from Sierra Leone at just the right time.  
Somebody had to look after his dad, and Peter had a fair amount of leave accumulated and a passport that wasn't doing anything, so it was decided. Besides, hanging around jazz clubs with his dad would make a nice change from his day job, which was coppering with a bit of "weird bollocks" thrown in.[1]  
Even Beverley said she didn't mind Peter going away for a little while: "as long as you don't get into any trouble with some American river goddess."  
"American river goddesses are the last thing on my mind," Peter protested. "I'll be too busy running round organising everything for dad." He thought for a moment. "I don't even know which river flows through Chicago, though I do have a vague memory of a lake...?"  
Beverley threw a pillow at him. They were discussing the matter in her big double bed, close to the French windows with a good view of her river, the Beverley Brook.  
"They're all blokes, anyway, as far as I remember, in Chicago," Beverley said. "They did terrible things to the Chicago River. I mean, not only did they canalise a huge stretch through the city, but they actually made it flow in the opposite direction! And Michigan – well, he's one of the orginals, like Old Man Thames."  
"Native American, you mean?" Peter asked.  
"Ojibwe, I think," Beverley said, "but I doubt that he paddles round in a birchbark canoe wearing fringed buckskins these days, if that's what you're thinking."  
"Well, Old Father Thames doesn't go around looking like an Ancient Celt, so give me some credit for brains."  
"Oh, I don't keep you around for your brains," Beverley said, with a slow grin – and she spent the next half hour showing him just what she did keep him around for.

They were met at O'Hare airport. There was something about an old jazzman that made him stand out in the crowd after they came through Customs, even if he hadn't been holding a cardboard sign that said "Lord Grant" on it.  
'Lord' Grant grinned hugely, and enclosed his old friend in a massive bear hug – which he could do, with him not carrying any of his own luggage. "Sonny! Great to see you!"  
Sonny was a black man with a deeply creased face, wild white hair, and a grin to match. "Got the car right outside – we're going to give you a wild ride! This your son?"  
Peter gave a half-hearted grin and a shrug – he couldn't shake hands without putting down a suitcase.  
Sonny clapped him round the shoulders with the hand that wasn't holding the cardboard sign. "Glad to meet you..."  
"Peter," Peter supplied.  
"Call me Sonny," said Sonny. "Me and your dad, we go waay back."

The evening's entertainment was already set up. Sonny came to collect them from the hotel where they had been catching up on their sleep. It had been a long flight, and overnight, and they were in a completely different time zone, after all. They rode the Red Line to North Side Uptown, to go to the Green Mill.   
"Al Capone drank here, you know," Mr Grant said, "and all the greats have played here...." He started reeling off a list, with Sonny nodding along and adding his own comments on the players' abilities here and there.  
"And here we are," Sonny said, ushering them to a table with a good view of the stage. "And there's Stella by Starlight." He waved a hand towards a corner of the bar, where a large statue of a naked lady stood, with a swag of fruit over one shoulder. "She got dug out of the cellars when the place was renovated. Now, what are you all having?"  
Some time later, in the middle of a set by a band he'd never heard of, Peter went up to the bar for more beer. A tall white man wearing a big leather coat was leaning against the bar. He was carrying a staff, and he reeked of magic. Peter got his drink, and raised the glass in the direction of the tall wizard. "I wasn't expecting the local wizards to send a welcoming committee," he said, "and I'm strictly on holiday – I'm a bit far out of Met Police jurisdiction here."  
The tall man put out his hand, and Peter shook it. "Harry Dresden," he said. "I work with the Chicago PD, and I was told you might be able to help."  
"Really? Who told you that?"  
"Would you believe a skull on a shelf? Or at least, the spirit currently inhabiting a skull on a shelf? His name's Bob, and he told me you'd be here, and that you know a thing or two about river gods."  
"You could say that," Peter agreed cautiously. "I know the rivers in London, anyway."  
"We need to talk to the god of the River Calumet," Harry said. "It's part of an abduction investigation."  
"Witness, or suspect?" Peter asked.  
"Witness, we think. That's what the Queen of the Winter Court says, anyway, and she has her ways of knowing these things."  
"Hang on – what's the Winter Court?"  
"Local Fae – I've got an understanding with them."  
Peter's eyes widened. The dealings he'd had with powerful Fae in their natural habitat hadn't encouraged him to reach any sort of understanding with them. Molly, the Fae who lived at the Folly, was an entirely different proposition, of course. He had a good relationship with her - and her cooking.  
"And, who's been abducted?"  
"A little girl. Disappeared from the park where she was playing. In fact, it might be more than one kid. As far as Chicago PD are concerned, it's an ordinary missing persons, but...."  
"There was some 'weird bollocks'?"  
"That's Limey-speak for magical crap, right? So, yeah, that's what the Queen says, and that's why I'm on the case."  
"Mr Dresden - "  
"Harry."  
"Harry – as a serving police officer in the UK, you know I can't get involved with anything involving the Chicago police. I get into enough trouble with the Commissioner as it is."  
"It's just talking to the river god," Harry said. "Nothing official – they don't know about the magical side of the case. They just know that I might have a witness and maybe a lead."  
Peter sighed, and finished his pint. "And it's an abduction case, of a little girl?" he asked.  
Harry nodded, looking hopeful.   
"So, now would be a good time to do something about it?"  
Harry nodded again. "Don't want to drag you away from anything – but...."  
"Just a minute." Peter crossed from the bar to the table where his dad was sitting with Sonny. "You going to be all right if I go off for a bit?" he asked.  
His dad waved him away. "You go and enjoy yourself, son," he said. "I know the name of the hotel if you're not back here by closing time – or I might just go on somewhere else with Sonny here." He chuckled, and so did Sonny – both of them pretending it was thirty years ago and they could party till dawn.  
"You know this place closes at 4am, right?" Sonny said.  
"I shouldn't be that long." Peter squeezed his dad's shoulder. "See you later, then," he said, and turned to follow the tall Chicago wizard.  
A little way up the road they stopped beside a beat up old Volkswagen. "This is the Blue Beetle," Harry said. "Hop in."  
As Peter reached for the seatbelt, something large and shaggy stirred on the back seat.  
"It's okay, Mouse," Harry said. "He's with me."  
Peter craned his neck to come face to jaw with an enormous hound. "Does Lord Baskerville know his dog's in Chicago?" he asked.  
"Mouse is extra back up." Harry was pulling out into the flow of traffic now.  
Now that it was too late to gracefully back out, it occurred to Peter that extra back up in the form of a huge shaggy dog would not be required if this was a simple matter of just chatting to a witness.  
"You got any ideas on how we track the river god down?" Harry asked.  
"An offering is usually a good start," Peter said. "I once gave Mama Thames a truckload of beer for a favour."  
"Beer we can do," Harry said. "I don't think we can run to a whole truckload, though."  
Peter shrugged. "It was a pretty big favour," he said. "So, is this one of the old original river gods, or someone more recent?"   
"They can change?"  
"Yeah – Mama Thames took possession of the lower reaches of the Thames about fifty? - sixty? - years ago. I think she was a Nigerian nurse originally. Whereas Old Father Thames controls the upper reaches, and he goes back to before the Romans."  
"So the Calumet might be Native American? We'd better get some cigarettes as well." He stopped the car close to a convenience store and headed off for supplies, leaving Peter and Mouse in the car. By the time he came back, Mouse had laid his head comfortably on Peter's shoulder while Peter reached back to scratch his chest.  
Harry put a twelve pack of cans on the back seat. "That enough?" he asked. "I got some cigars as well. Calumet is an old French word for 'peace pipe', so I'm guessing good quality tobacco is what we're after."  
He drove on, and then asked: "Where do you think we should give the offering?"  
Peter shrugged. "I don't know the geography – is there somewhere like a park, or a promenade or something?"  
"It's all industrial down that end of town," Harry said, "but there's the harbour, where the Calumet meets the Lake. Would that do?"  
"It's a start."

The scene was familiar to Peter from a dozen TV shows – the warehouses, the cranes, the dark water. He half expected Green Arrow to be lurking on a warehouse roof somewhere close by.   
Harry parked the car, and they walked out to where a stubby pier jutted into the harbour. Harry put down the beer and cigars. "Anything else we have to do?" he asked.  
Peter was listening, and trying to get the feel of any local vestigia. He hardly noticed the skinny black teenager sitting on the railing of the pier.  
"You looking for someone?" asked the boy.  
"Scat, kid," said Harry.  
Peter bent down and picked up a can. "We got some Goose Island IPA for you, if you're Calumet, and some cigars."  
"Goose Island is cool," the boy said, taking the can. "Mich would probably like the cigars."  
"You're the god of the River Calumet?" Harry asked. He sounded as if he were expecting someone more impressive than a kid in jeans and a hoodie.  
The kid saluted him with the can. "For nearly a hundred years now," he said. He looked more closely at Peter. "You don't sound like you're from Chicago," he said.  
"London, England," Peter said. "I've had dealings with Mama Thames and her daughters, and Old Father Thames and his sons."  
Calumet nodded thoughtfully. "I don't get many offerings," he said. He took a long swig from the can. "So what do you want of me?" he asked.  
"Information," Harry said. "We're looking for a little girl, and we think she might have been taken aboard a ship somewhere along your river."  
"Don't see many little girls down here," Calumet said. "What's she look like?"  
"Dark haired, pale skin, about seven years old. She was wearing pink leggings and a long tshirt with a unicorn on it. Her mama's real worried about her."  
Calumet took another swig from the can. "Good stuff," he said. "And there's been more than one little girl. There was a barge tied up just over there," he gestured with the can to the other side of the harbour. "Four or five little girls, all of them carried aboard as if they was asleep."  
"Or drugged," Harry said, "or ensorcelled."  
Calumet shrugged. "Those are possibilities too. The barge is gone now, though – headed up north, maybe Milwaukee, maybe the other side of the lake."  
"How long ago?" Harry asked.   
"This afternoon. The little girl you're looking for, she was the last. Didn't like the look of the guys crewing the barge."  
Harry looked out towards the Lake. "They could be anywhere by now," he said, sounding discouraged.  
"Mich would know," Calumet said. "But you'll need to bring more smokes."  
Harry turned back towards the car. "I'll be as quick as I can," he said. "You okay with staying here until I get back?"  
"It's not what I was expecting when I came to Chicago," Peter said, "but yeah. I'm okay with anything I can do to help – short of getting involved with the Chicago police."  
The Blue Beetle disappeared round the corner of a warehouse, and Peter went to sit with Calumet on the pier railing. "You get on well with the Lake, then?" Peter asked.  
"He gave me the river," Calumet said. "It's polluted, and it's industrial, but there's a lot going on in the harbour, you know?"  
Peter nodded, and looked interested, and Calumet went on: "I was just a kid, out swimming from one of the beaches up that way," he pointed vaguely out of the harbour and up the coastline of Chicago. "In those days, the black folks stayed on one part of the beach, and the white folks stayed on another. I was floating out, hanging on to a railroad tie, and I floated across to the white folks' side of things – by accident, but that didn't matter to them. Bunch of white guys started throwing rocks at me, and I lost hold of the railroad tie, and then I was drifting away.... Mich pulled me into his canoe, and asked me if I wanted to look after a river. Brought me down here, and I've been here ever since. If you want, you can look me up in the local histories. My name was Eugene Williams then, and that incident caused four days of rioting, back in 1919. See, when the police arrived, they didn't arrest the white men – they arrested a black guy."  
The sound of an ancient VW engine made them both look back along the wharf, and Harry's beat up old car drew up. He brought over a bulky carrier bag, Mouse at his heels. "Think this'll be enough?" he asked, opening the bag to show a variety of packets of cigarettes and cigars.  
"That's pretty cool," Calumet said. He took Harry to the end of the pier, where Harry put down the bag. Calumet stared out into the dark for a long minute. "He'll be along soon," he said.  
The spirit of Lake Michigan did not arrive in a birchbark canoe, dressed in fringed buckskin. He arrived in a sleek speedboat, dressed in jeans and a tshirt with the slogan "I Stand with Standing Rock Sioux". "You guys waiting for a ride?" he asked.  
They all got in the speedboat, and Mich opened up the throttle and took them out of the harbour onto the Lake. Peter looked back to land, and all the lights of the skyscrapers reflected on the dark lake waters. He hadn't expected to be seeing Chicago from this angle.

Harry was up front with Michigan, explaining about the barge and the little girls.  
"I saw the guys crewing the barge," Calumet said. "Mich, I think at least one of them was Fomor."  
"I hate those guys," Michigan said. "Can't get rid of them."  
"So – Fomor?" Peter asked. "What are they?"  
"Apart from creepy child-snatchers, you mean?" Harry said. "They live under the lake. Technically, their King Corb signed the Unseelie Accords, so there's a truce, but I don't know enough about their internal dealings. There might be factions that don't agree to the Accords."  
"I suppose it's too late for me to get off the boat?" Peter asked. "I'm not supposed to get involved, remember?"  
"Relax, Peter. This is way outside the Chicago PD's jurisdiction," Harry said. "It's Coastguards, or something."  
"You're not making me feel any better about this," Peter said. He shrugged. "Still, too late to worry now."  
"One thing I should mention," Harry said. "The Fomor have this thing – they throw sea urchins that spew acid all over the place."  
"Great," Peter said. "I only brought the one decent suit, and I'm wearing it."  
Michigan was slowing down. He pointed up ahead, where a barge was drifting without any engines. The deck was illuminated with floodlights, and there were figures moving about under the lights.  
Harry squinted into the light. "They're laying out a summoning circle," he said. As they watched, some of the men came up from the hold. Each one was carrying a child in his arms.  
"I think the kids are an offering to the Fomor," Michigan said. "Looks to me like those guys want to do a deal."  
"Any deal with the Fomor is going to be no good for Chicago," Harry muttered. He looked from Michigan to Calumet to Peter. "What do you say we go and break up this little party?"

Michigan cut the speedboat's engine and it ghosted up towards the side of the barge. On the deck of the barge, all eyes were on the summoning circle. A pentangle had been chalked in the circle, and a little girl was laid, still sleeping, on each point of it.  
There was, inevitably, someone chanting. He stopped chanting, pretty quick, as Harry swung himself over the barge rail and started running towards him, Mouse at his heels.  
Peter climbed up on deck and was still hanging onto the rail when he cast his first spell - "Impello!" and the big man who had been running towards him fell backwards a couple of metres and sprawled on the deck.   
Off to one side, Peter heard Harry yell "Forzare!" The effect was much the same as Peter's spell, and another evil minion went flying backwards.  
He was running, then. Calumet and Michigan were already scooping up little girls in their arms, and he took the next nearest and ran with her back to the speedboat. It was a mercy she was unconscious – the last thing this situation needed was a bunch of panicking seven year olds.   
As he deposited the child on the bench seat of the speedboat, he looked across the deck of the barge at more or less ankle level. Calumet had grabbed another little girl, and was holding her to his chest while Michigan stood between him and something that looked like the Creature from the Black Lagoon – it had gills in its neck and everything, and it looked seriously pissed off.  
Michigan was chanting something that Peter didn't recognise – he was pretty sure Native American Lake gods didn't spell cast in Latin – but it was clear he wasn't going to get to the end of it before the Fomor was upon him. Harry was involved in some heavy duty magical duelling with the wizard in charge of the summoning circle, and Mouse had unleashed his inner Hound of the Baskervilles and was chomping down hard on a man's leg – the man was screaming.  
Peter thought, fleetingly, of Nightingale taking out a Tiger Tank – he didn't have anything like that level of skill yet, but he had to do something.  
There wasn't time for anything fancy – Peter cast the biggest fireball he could manage. Then whatever it was that Michigan had conjured up hit the Fomor right in the chest – Peter got the impression of something like a sea serpent that flung its coils around the Fomor - and more fire came from Harry, directing the flow of flame with his staff, like a flame thrower.  
Between the three attacks, the Fomor staggered backwards, and leapt into the lake.  
Calumet deposited the fourth little girl into the speedboat, and Michigan picked up the last of them.   
Then Harry was running back to the speedboat, with Mouse right behind him. "Let's get outa here!" he shouted, and Michigan gunned the engine.   
They left the barge still drifting.  
Michigan headed back to the Calumet Harbour. Harry bent over one of the little girls and examined her carefully. "Out cold, but she should be okay – I'll wait till we're back on land before I try to wake them up," he said.  
Peter thought that was probably wise – it was very cramped in the speedboat now.

Back at the harbour, they carried the little girls out of the speedboat and laid them in a row on the ground. Peter waited with his hands in his pockets while Harry said his goodbyes to Michigan and Calumet. The Lake god lit a cigar. "This is good tobacco," he said. "What did you say the make was?" Harry handed him the packaging.  
"You sure you don't want one?" Michigan asked Calumet.  
Calumet swigged from the can he was holding. "Nah – I'm good."  
Then they were gone, and Harry went off to find a phone to call the cops. By the time Murphy and her team got there, the little girls were awake and confused, but not panicking.  
"Murphy'll deal with it from here," Harry said, coming to stand with Peter. "That was a pretty good night's work we did," he added, holding out his hand.   
Peter shook it. "Any chance of getting me back to that jazz club?" he asked. "I think it's about time I took my old dad back to the hotel."

**Author's Note:**

> [1] All right - a lot of "weird bollocks".


End file.
